Sorry, world.

This blog just isn't going to happen. There's too much going on in life to spend more time in front of my computer! Check back in six months--I may yet have a change of heart. Until then, adieu.

Lab protocols in haiku, part 1

What if all the protocols I work off of and write were in haiku? Maybe they'd look something like this:

subclone dna
transfect into hela cells
measure fluorescence

It would make them that much easier to remember. And I'd be that much more distracted.

R

Apartment move

I finally moved apartments, something I've been looking forward to for a long time. The current state of my kitchen:

About normal, really.

I thought this picture an interesting reflection of my life:

Wallet: home made in 3rd grade
Coffee cup: because a strong cup of coffee on a saturday makes the world a better place.

Demitasse: because American coffee is good, but Italian is even better.

Candles: for my aesthetic sensibilities
RC car: because (not diminishing those aesthetic sensibilities) yes, this is a bachelor pad.
Pile of garbage: my backpack was long overdue for a cleanout.
Toolbox: containing the basic necessities for putting together Ikea furniture. And, of course, duct tape.
Socks: so I can wear my flops to work, and my lab shoes at work.
Duster: for the annual cleaning.
Coffee table: $10 from another grad student.

Accidental insight

I enjoy the suggestions Google makes for me as I type in the search box. Normally they're helpful, sometimes they're entertaining, and sometimes (assuming the suggestion algorithm is based on query frequency), they provide some insight into the "average internet user." If news and YouTube comments were reflective of the average person, the average person would be an idiot. Google queries are more accurate, but I'm yet sure just how much. Start typing "people without," and these are the top suggestions:

- belly buttons
- health insurance
- emotions
- fingerprints
- a conscience
- friends
- eyebrows
- arms legs

Numbers, part 2

- If you spend $1.50 a day on coffee, that'll add up to $25,000 over 50 years.
- If you sneeze once a day, that adds up to about 30,000 sneezes over a lifetime.
- If you spend 10 minutes a day reading blogs, that adds up to some 200+ days over a lifetime that you could have spent doing something more interesting.

Hm.

A day in the life

7:30: alarm goes off
7:35: alarm goes off
7:40: alarm goes off. get up. check weather, news, email.
7:45: bathroom and dress. avoid shaving (possible). avoid clothes (not possible).
7:55: breakfast while making lunch and coffee
7:15: pack up. brush teeth. feed Shark (beta fish). go to car. go back to apartment to get whatever i forgot. go back to car.
7:20: tune ipod. usually a podcast from ROCKHARBOR or Mars Hill Church. "redemptive commuting."
7:50: arrive at cubicle sweet cubicle. check email. plan day.
8:00-6:00: work. about 1/3 research work in cubicle, 1/3 lab work, 1/3 class work. eat lunch while working, but take multiple shorter breaks. research work centers around journal articles. lab work involves subcloning plasmids and growing bacteria and tumor cells (both ironically difficult to keep alive). class work involves facebook, gchat, xkcd, and the occasional textbook.
8:30: coffee
9:00: snack
10:00: meet with advisor. realize i did everything wrong. consider quitting PhD.
11:00: lunch 1
12:00-1:00: hold office hours. encourage nervous students. terrorize overly confident students. try to sound like I know what I'm talking about ("well, that problem is so simple, why don't we try this other one..."). get free food and coffee in exchange for homework answers.
1:30: coffee
2:30: lunch 2
3:30: falling asleep. go for a walk. get coffee. turn on Pandora.
4:00: snack
5:00: plan how I'm going to get a great idea to save the world, start a company, get bought out by J&J, and retire to the south of France.
6:00: realize I can save a day if I transfect some cells now.
7:00: go home. hungry. get dinner. check email.
9:00: talk to girlfriend.
11:00: shower. prayer. read McCollough's 1776. glad i don't live in the 18th century. sleep.
1:00am: wake up to neighbors. again. 1:30: back to sleep.

Comments

Allow me to indulge in what may be intense irony:

Comments below YouTube videos and CNN.com can provide some of the most astonishing insights into peoples' minds. And not usually in a good way. Consider these comments below a result CNN article on the Lawrence Livermore nuclear fusion lab:

- Why do "scientists" insist on trying to find new ways to destroy the world?
- I thought fusion was drink and fission was something you did with a pole and bait down at the creek.
- YAY!!!! a new place to cook my meat loaf! cmon guys, its called common sense.
- Didn't these guys watch Spiderman I. Dr. Octopus did the very same thing and it didn't work out so well for him...Do these guys really think that Spiderman will save them when this thing causes the end of the world...when will it be done again...oh yeah, end of 2012 when the Mayan Calnder ends!!!
- What a waste of time. You can't create a star without an immense amount of mass.
- We could use your mom. Gravity problem solved!

The list goes on. Simultaneously funny, sad, and aggravating. Mostly sad.

For more, see http://xkcd.com/202/.

Numbers

- Most cells are microscopic, yet most human cells have over 3,000,000,000 base pairs (in the right order) packed inside them.

- The average human body has trillions of red blood cells (1,000,000,000,000), and produced 2,000,000 new ones per second.

- e. coli can replicate themselves every 20 minutes. One bacterium can thus yield eight in one hour, or, in theory, 4 thousand billion billion bacteria in a day.

Biology is awesome.

Tissue engineering

It's what I want to do. And no, it has nothing to do with Kleenex. I am not getting a PhD so that I can spend my life engineering new ways to make blowing your nose more pleasurable. The goal of tissue engineering is to re-create biology tissues for replacement and repair of damaged ones. The closer you can get to the real thing, the better. For all the brilliant minds devoting their efforts to engineering, we can't do better than nature. We keep trying, and we can't do it. So instead, we take our inspiration from nature. It's called biomimetic engineering. It's good stuff.

In the meantime, I'm studying molecular biomechanics. Mechanical engineering on the teeny-tiny scale. Micro-meters and nano-neutons. The forces on cell nuclei and embryonic tissue. That kind of thing.

That's all I've got for now. Thanks for reading.

Winter in pictures

Last time I posted pictures, it was of leaves changing color. That was a long time ago. This also happened to be my first winter; these pictures are for anyone who doesn't live in a ridiculous climate like that of Pittsburgh.

Snow is cold and wet and inconvenient and completely awesome. My next ambition is to make snow sculptures a la Calvin and Hobbes.

Blog 2.0

Dear readers,

I'm restarting my blog with the purposes of 1) informing, 2) educating, and 3) entertaining. It's not intended as 1) a rant, 2) a procrastination tool, or 3) replacement for real interpersonal communication. That's the plan, anyway. Possible topics include:

- Where the wild things are: my experiences as an undergraduate

- Heiku: when eighteen syllables is one too many

- Graduate school and goldfish

- Pyramids built by slaves: an analogy for academic research

- Sex(AI) before cleavage, and other oddities of bioengineering

Enjoy!

Richard